Author / Edward Champion
“Unlike a Lot of Women, I Like Beer!”
Well, who knew that there weren’t a lot of women who imbibed beer in the 1970s? That is, if we believe Michelob.
There are important questions that must be answered:
1. Who determined that “a lot of women” didn’t like beer? (And this stereotype, despite some progress, has remained a problem in recent years.)
2. How did they decide upon the seven ounce bottle? (And why seven? I mean, if these domestic women drinkers were ostensibly dainty, why not settle for four or five?)
3. Considering that the first shot is very careful to include a gesture of this woman putting down her purse, was this beer an attempt to market to the professional woman? Or the more civilized housewife trying to create a more level gender playing field? (Sentence in this commercial to support the latter rhetorical question: “And he likes it too!” So is the husband the one here making the compromise? Or is MICH VII intended to be the compromise to maintain happy marriages?)
I can find no trace of what happened to MICH VII, although several vintage mirrors seem to be available on eBay.
I Get the Picture: Rachel Cooke is Living Under a Rock
I used to think that Rachel Cooke’s columns were authored by some sheltered journalist who never left her house and who simply wasn’t paying much attention to rudimentary trends developing in the publishing industry. Here, after all, was an idiot, who was actually collecting a regular paycheck for her foolish generalizations, castigating the litblogosphere based on one day of indolent Web surfing. Maybe she simply didn’t have the smarts to engage with the world around her. Maybe she preferred to furtively pick her nose and watch bad movies instead of doing a bit of thinking or even hard investigation of a genre.
But now, Ms. Cooke declares she’s seen the light! She’s one of us now! These things called graphic novels actually have literary merit! Never mind that Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer in 1992 — a good fifteen years ago — and Maus‘s two volumes were nominated for the National Book Critics Circle. Ms. Cooke dutifully read Art Spiegelman and she could clearly see “how brilliant it was, of course.” But being cast of an utterly lazy and incurious mental disposition, Ms. Cooke, perhaps incapable of tracking down Will Eisner or Alan Moore or any of the countless graphic novelists working around the time, privately declared in 1986 that the landscape to be devoid of any additional talent. The “strips” that Ms. Cooke identified — as opposed to comic books or graphic novels, which every other neophyte was jumping up and down over; presumably, Ms. Cooke was confused and didn’t have a clue as to where to look — were giving her a headache.
But now no more! For comics are now mainstream! And this means that Ms. Cooke can rethink her prejudices against this retrograde medium because, well, these books are now too omnipresent to discount.
I’m very glad that Ms. Cooke has written this column. It is now entirely clear that she lives underneath a rock.
(Thanks to Andrew for the link.)
Roundup
- The Millions offers a highly subjective ranking of the McSweeney’s issues, although I’d argue that Chabon’s editorial work on the second genre volume (Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, never issued a number) far exceeds Issue #10. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see Garth lay down his subjective tastes like this over a literary journal. Here’s an unexpectedly thorough overview of all the issues — along with pictures. And, incidentally, in light of the AMS fallout, you might want to give the McSweeney’s Store and help them out with a purchase.
- Does David Letterman sell books?
- Andrew Wheeler ahs an advance look at Gene Wolfe’s latest book, Pirate Freedom.
- A review of the two-volume American Speeches offering from Library of America.
- 10 Surprisingly Good Tribute Albums.
- James Marsters on Torchwood? WTF?
- Will Gotham Mart live again? (via Bibliophile Bullpen)
- Can you really trust the Geek Squad?
- If you need a Harry Potter cheat sheet before Saturday, this will serve you well. (via Bill Peschel)
- Apparently, the racism racket has caused Tintin in the Congo‘s sales to leap.
- Footloose is being remade. To paraphrase Sammy Hager, the greed gets around. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
- So here’s some real Harry Potter news. Kassia Krozser exposes the book discount racket.
- There’s an interesting series at Editor & Publisher: 10 Newspapers That Do It Right.
- A blog to investigate: Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age.
- Online literary censorship from the Shanghai Information Bureau.
- There’s a legal battle over a Dorothy Parker compilation.
- Dan Green on Tom Perotta: “I understand that practically everyone in the world has a “screenplay” in the works, and that few of them will ever be produced, but if you’re going to write a novel that exists only as a proto-movie, why not just write it up as a script to begin with?”
- Believe it or not, Billy Wilder’s lost classic Ace in the Hole is now available on DVD.
- Apparently, Women’s Wear Daily refuses to electronically disseminate a critical profile of Nikki Finke. Do they fear retaliation from Finke? Before we have clear answers to these questions, in the meantime, David Poland reproduces the profile in question.
- Why is Blade Runner being reshot? More mysterious details from Film Ick.
- Dirk Gently is coming to radio. (via Savage Popcorn)
- DFW in Italy (YouTube)
- YouTube’s 5 Sorriest Questions for the 2008 Presidential Candidates.
- The return of Ayn Rand.
- Apparently, Farscape will be revived in a series of webisodes.
- Reuters: “A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday.” Beyond the troubling discrimination, who knew that Right Said Fred were seers?
Read a Book, Read a Book, Read a Motherfucking Book
This may be the first reading campaign that has expressed the urgency of reading, while simultaneously berating its audience. And that’s not all. The spot also demands, “Your body needs water. So drink that shit,” among other angry catechisms evocative of better living.
I’d like to see more people reading and if this gets at least one kid to read a book, then it can’t be bad. It also takes a truly deranged mind to put BO on one buttock and OK on the other, suggesting in a rather hysterical sense that reading is sexy or as empowering as a booty call. I hope that the crazy motherfucker who came up with that idea is hired for something else.
But there’s an anachronistic groupthink approach to this ad — a sense of severely underestimating the audience’s intelligence — that greatly troubles me. I simply do not believe that people are this dumb or that they will be coaxed into reading because an animated guy named D-Mike says so. (And what’s wrong with the sports page anyway?)
I don’t think Tony Soprano has whacked the novel or that books are going away anytime soon. But surely there’s a better way to promote literacy than this unintentionally hilarious video.